Patrick

WTF have I just seen?

This sounded too outlandish, so I looked it up, and yeah it did happen. The Kentler Project. Holy shit.

Also, felt like dealing with students would’ve been punishment for being such a shit head when I was younger.

A few told me to pursue a PhD, as a TA got to work closely with them, nope. Not a chance in hell. Absolute misery and what the hell novel things are there to write about finance anymore? It’s not like 1968 when you could formalize the practitioners rules of thumb.

Thinking about the derisive tone “industry” was spoken in by the PhD candidates made me smile. Seemed like a way better deal than academia tbh.

Similar to Big Law track just with more numbers.

For front office go Ivy+ at least, preferably Ivy, get analyst position right out of undergrad with lots of internships. Or top 10ish MBA program for associate roles. Path to lots of consulting or investment banking roles that pay very well.

You have piqued morbid curiosity in me with this. Sort of want to see it, fear it would also be terrifying.

Even when you get financial statements off of EDGAR the are a mess. Just less so. Give me an instantly usable balance sheet, earnings and statement of cash flows before you start talking about AI sentience!

Found this out quickly with some really basic financial statements in PDF format. To my immense disappointment.

Giving me flashbacks to an elderly neighbor cursing in Italian the relentless squirrel onslaught to his garden.

Saying this as I have my wife and I’s portfolio up in Interactive Brokers Trader Workstation carries a lot of irony.

Haha what else can you expect from an industry where men love a janky antique, their Bloombergs? So much of finance is “the 80s were a great decade, let’s stay as close to them as possible”.

Front office teams at a lot of places is still far closer to 2006. I’m aware of people working at the elite banks who’ve mentioned what a no, no AI use. Sounds so miserable.

Nope. AI adoption in finance is still in its infancy. For all sorts of reasons.

Yes, the nature of a single individual who can claim to represent the nation’s political will is inviting disaster. Hence why resignation to the future is a plebiscitary presidency going forward.

Inability of activists to reckon with this data, discomfort and denial around proscriptive measures, makes me incredibly bearish.

Commit an egregious fuck up that cannot be swept under the rug, like a hospitalization due to drugs, arrest. On top of low grades, no athletic ability. Tough, but some manage to.

Shudders in financial services.

Some of the most brutally competitive positions, with insane hours, in finance involve the miserable task of getting financial statements in PDF form into spreadsheets, where you then build your model. Fun times.

Just, fuck. They should read Milton Friedman. Or reading in general. He, and his acolytes, had a lot to say about second order effects. Yes, different domains, but second order effects apply across domains.

Coming from an economics and finance background, where right wingers are overcome with the vapors about second order effects - and then seeing, um, this. And much more. It’s really something.

I do think expanding the list of sanctioned individuals on the WB is an area that can act as genuine leverage. Ideally expanded more and more. They already have a weird and highly bifurcated economy so I do wonder what it would look like. Something probably weirder than even UDI era Rhodesia’s maybe

SA and Rhodesia’s reliance on commodity exports with many substitutes gave sanctions more bite, as well as not being so embedded in the international financial system. Israeli tech is a far more difficult choke point to sanction. I lean more towards sanctions via financial channels, personally.

Unsure, unfortunately. From financial fraud again, Madoff and its public nature, seemed to prevent this dynamic. It’s so unusual not likely repeatable. Politically, post war Germany doesn’t make me optimistic. A collective amnesia, pretending. Digital footprints muddy that.

Not anti-sanctions myself. Sanctions are mechanically much more difficult due to its most dynamic sector, tech, being intangible with remote delivery compared to tangible commodities. Shifting assets and sales to other jurisdictions for tax purposes can be repurposed for sanctions.

Reminding me of how much I use the Italian MSG - anchovies.

They will behave as many victims of financial fraud when it’s revealed they’ve been had. Attack the messenger first and then everyone but the fraudster secondly.

Tale as old as time. See Russia. Aside from general inability to take advantage of their immense human capital in commerce - their officers corps chronically selects for obsequious morons due to paranoia.

Similar to what I’ve seen made in a context, policing, and “why are American police so lousy”.